You Can Shake Yourself Out of Negative Patterns Without Even Noticing

Therapy and manifestation aren't the only agents of behavioural change—sometimes circumstances conspire, almost behind your back, to shift your actions for the better.

Photo by Kinga Howard on Unsplash

It really doesn’t take me long to sensually connect with the craving to let loose. That thirst is something which once cyclically drove me. As a low-lying subconscious urge, it would always start as a little poke, easily ignorable. But over the course of a couple of weeks, it would build daily into a more persistent throb which would inevitably overwhelm me, tsunami style into a mid-week out-of-my-mind cleanse. Of course, there was absolutely nothing clean about it, in fact, it was the opposite of wellness. What do we call that? Un-wellness? Badness? Filth? However we describe it and however down and dirty things got, it would wash the need from my psyche and I could happily progress on with my life without having to sidestep that tap tap tap at my door. Until of course the whole bloody thing started up all over again.

Do you ever get a metaphorical itch you just have to scratch? A hankering for something that just won’t be compartmentalised into the ‘not for you’ corner? For me, it wasn’t ever just about the booze, though of course that was a part of it. It was also the dancing, the flirting, the Big Mac at the end of the night, followed by the morning debrief in the office, ideally hooked up to a never-ending supply of coffee, finished off with a Chipotle and a side of full fat coke at 12.02pm. It was the abandon, the release which would grab at me, serpentine-like at the gullet.

For any long-term readers, you’ll know I’ve never so much as dabbled in illicit narcotics which probably could have fast tracked me to my destination quicker than the slow and low option of the Bacardi Breezer route. I mention the Breezers because this whole pattern kicked off while I was in secondary school during the late nineties, aka the alco-pop age. I personally always preferred Smirnoff Ice, which incidentally is still available for £1.79 for 27.5cl. Talk about the taste of nostalgia.